THE CHROME-PLATED MACHINE PISTOL

Beside the whirring rooftop air-conditioning machine while the sun sank prettily in a polluted Christmas Day sky, 4 p.m., Shannen had arrived an hour early smoking half a pack of light cigarettes while she waited. When she saw Molly emerge from the rooftop exit door she beamed, beautiful (Shannen's beauty almost didn't diminish when she frowned.) Molly and Shannen were quiet a while, watching the city in the early dusk. Then, Molly turned to Shannen excitedly: "It's so obvious! Let's be superheroes! "Shannen: "Oh yeah! Yes!" They raced down the five flights of stairs, both ovulating, their swollen breasts adorable, splendid really under silk (Shannen!) and linen (Molly!) shirts!

SOCIAL REALISM

THE STORY OF DESIRE
Desire stands stunned at 4 p.m. She is no longer a little kid, she realizes. This superstar wants nothing more than food and a place to sleep. She has no money. Ordinarily this fact was nothing astonishing to her but today was a crisis. If only Sporty were here everything would be o.k., she thinks. It starts raining. Desire is determined not to cry, and she didn't!


THE STORY OF LORI
Lori at the bar drinking White Russians, she watches herself in the mirror, just another drunk, she thinks. Summers in Universe City were intolerable, no air conditioning at home, nothing going on there at all really, not even a cat that needs to be fed.

In a photograph long lost, Lori wore her Girl Scout uniform, dancing for the camera.

She orders another drink, her sixth, and wishes she didn't feel like crying every day.


DESIRE vs THE PUNKS
Desire spots her current enemy half a block up, she stops, stands stock-still until the idiot finally notices her. He is starkly panicked, crosses the street and walks away hurriedly in the opposite direction. Then Desire realizes that she needs to buy a Public Image Limited t-shirt!


LORI CRASHING THROUGH
Lori watches six black and white screens in a security booth at Garagetown Incidental. People shop, find something they want to buy, pay for it and leave.

While she watches commerce in action, she scans new catalogues, fills out order forms. Every five minutes she sniffs a line of coke, until the seven grams are gone. Then Lori switches to whiskey, sipping from a flask the rest of her shift. "So what?" she says to the empty room.

The empty room comes up with no answer at all.


DESIRE vs THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Desire, asked to leave RatDonald's for being "disruptive", hot chocolate at United Dizzy Farmers instead. Soon she stands, awed, at the Gates of Universe City.


LORI AND THE REVOLVING DOOR
Random loser guy in her bed, she wakes sickened, sneaks out of the apartment to go to work. Cocaine in her pocket--Lori has arrived!


SUMMER 1999
This is all-out nowhere.
For ten thousand invisible reasons, Desire stands stock-still in a parking lot facing a bank clock, 3:59, she waits; is she waiting for a murderer? A rapist? A friend? No, she's only waiting for four o'clock a.m., her favorite hour of the day. Then dawn, breakfast, maybe some sleep.

She stops to sit on some church steps to write a quick letter to Sporty Spice:

I know it must be great in heaven magic land but if you could stand it we could use your charisma powers in Ohio. Disguise yourself and appear to me, you don't even have to tell me that it's you, I'll know. Rescue us, Our Sporty Spice!

Desire replaces the notebook in her pack and sets off on her tour of the city at the very end of the night.

THE STORY OF THE NIGHT

The sun goes down and I hit the ground and I'm almost happy that's the way I want to be. At 4 a.m. I stood in front of the Coke machine now and at the hour of our death. It snowed from two to four then rained from four to six. I laid awake stunned to discover that CATWOMAN might be the best movie I've ever seen. Witnessed Cincinnati Police Division commit murders to the Harper's Bizarre version of "Feelin' Groovy." Rumored soundtrack to tonight's "unsolved homicides" is "Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle. An ordinary late winter morning in a worthless Ohio town.

NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD No. 2, July, 1968

PUBLIC SERVICE LIMITED

With these mass-mailings, I hope to trigger a response to a cryptic phrase. You are invited, "Anonymous." Maybe only wasted high-schoolers take an interest in Crypto-Com. So!


"This is Your Super-Star Movie, you're the co-star, and we are your fans. We're loyal, you'll wheel around to 'Tops,' yes, you're an attraction.


"The audience is all under-aged at a 'Restricted' feature. You are the idol of that audience."


One version: Remember--You are in a life. Your ambitions are served. We Love You. You are an exemplar of your point of view.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD No. 94, Feb.-Mar. 1971

BODIES...THE EXHIBITION

Cincinnati Museum Center 31Mar2008
I was originally going to see this show with two friends but they backed out at the last minute and I was left to see it by myself. Standing in line an hour for the $23 ticket (I forewent the $3 movie) I observed the crowd and it was preternaturally normal: families with strollers, retired people, a few European tourists. The only anomalies were a couple of "Goth" kids who seemed excited about a corpse-fest and a bald chemo-woman with her grown daughter.

A long list of necessary rules were explained at the entrance followed by a giddy old woman ticket-taker who lamented that the high school biology classes that took the tour didn't take full advantage of this "wonderful opportunity," breezing through the exhibit in fifteen minutes. Why do teenagers only respect ghouls in Hollywood Horror Movies? Don't they know that this is a World-Class Haunted House?

So, young Chinese corpses (90% male) abounded, posed playing baseball, basketball, dancing, throwing discus. Body parts in cases, the bodies themselves out in the open, all eviscerated a hundred different ways. I experienced a range of emotion throughout the long tour (1-2 hours), a little overwhelmed by the end. I was cheered by the sight of the last corpse, a prosthetic man with a plastic heart and metal bones, a welcome sight after that endless procession of meat.

In the gift shop I purchased the $20 souvenir photograph book, commenting to the random clerk that the sense of our common mortality was staggering to me at that moment. Incidentally, Little Kids were everywhere you looked, and they were all having a blast!